eefinjay will go first, and the parties will apparently just wing it from here.

No post limit has been agreed to yet, but the participants are free to agree to something along the way, or we can just let the debate run its course.

I will setup a Debate Discussion thread here, where everyone else on the forum is free to comment on the ongoing debate. The two participants of the debate should refrain from joining that thread, until the debate is over, as is the custom here. Both are, however, more than welcome to start new threads on the forum, and otherwise use the forum as any other regular use would.

I've recently adopted the feminist label. I think it is reasonable to believe that that men and women should have equal rights and oppourtinies regardless of their gender. I've often found that when people try criticise feminism, they actually criticise vocal, radical feminists rather than feminism.

We're going to use the following definition of feminism:

The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

I can't argue at all using that definition of feminism. If that were feminism, there would be nothing to argue about. We live in the privileged west. No one here is against any kind of equality for women, certainly not anti-feminists.

Definition of FEMinism (not egalitarianism): Men and women belong to different classes. ALL women as a class are oppressed by ALL men as a class. (See Shulamith Firestone for clearest elaboration of this.)

Responsiblefreeagent

eeffinjay wrote:Thank you for setting this up, Gnug!

I've recently adopted the feminist label. I think it is reasonable to believe that that men and women should have equal rights and oppourtinies regardless of their gender. I've often found that when people try criticise feminism, they actually criticise vocal, radical feminists rather than feminism.

We're going to use the following definition of feminism:

The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.

I don't accept this definition of FEMinism. We live in the west, where EVERYONE believes in equality for everyone (EGALitarianism), including female (and male) anti-feminists.

Feminism is the belief that men and women are different classes, and that the class of women is systemically and systematically oppressed by the class of men. You can find the best elaboration of this theory in Shulamith Firestone's Dialectic of Sex, but you will find the premise as the basis of every feminist book ever written.

Responsiblefreeagent wrote:Definition of FEMinism (not egalitarianism): Men and women belong to different classes. ALL women as a class are oppressed by ALL men as a class. (See Shulamith Firestone for clearest elaboration of this.)

Feminism is the belief that men and women are different classes, and that the class of women is systemically and systematically oppressed by the class of men. You can find the best elaboration of this theory in Shulamith Firestone's Dialectic of Sex, but you will find the premise as the basis of every feminist book ever written.

I wouldn't go as far as to say they are different classes, but yes, women have been institutionally oppressed by a patriarchal social system throughout history with exceptions, of course. Recently, what used to be the exception has become more mainstream. A lot has changed since that book came out thanks to the men and women who fought for social reforms. People usually call those who fought for women's rights "feminists". http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenstimeline1.html

Google wrote:Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

WomensHistory wrote:In other words, feminism describes a culture in which women, because they are women, are treated differently than men, and that, in that difference of treatment, women are at a disadvantage; feminism assumes that such treatment is cultural and thus possible to change and not simply "the way the world is and must be"; feminism looks to a different culture as possible, and values moving towards that culture; and feminism consists of activism, individually and in groups, to make personal and social change towards that more desirable culture.

Emma Watson wrote:For the record, feminism, by definition, is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.

There are plenty of other examples where this is the accepted definition of feminism today. It seems you don't wanna argue against feminism using a definition that most feminists today would agree upon.

Responsiblefreeagent wrote:We live in the privileged west. No one here is against any kind of equality for women, certainly not anti-feminists.

We live in the west, where EVERYONE believes in equality for everyone (EGALitarianism), including female (and male) anti-feminists.

Because feminists have actively fought for the rights of women for centuries in the west, it is true that they have more rights in the west compared to the east. It is true that in the modern world most reasonable people would agree with the notion of equality for all, but it would be naive to believe that there's no sexism left in the west and everyone believes in equality.

Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? AJOS wrote:The authors employed a laboratory experiment to evaluate the hypothesis that status‐based discrimination plays an important role and an audit study of actual employers to assess its real‐world implications. In both studies, participants evaluated application materials for a pair of same‐gender equally qualified job candidates who differed on parental status. The laboratory experiment found that mothers were penalized on a host of measures, including perceived competence and recommended starting salary. Men were not penalized for, and sometimes benefited from, being a parent. The audit study showed that actual employers discriminate against mothers, but not against fathers.

Men are more likely to get hired than women even if they have the same qualifications.

The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study wrote:Both men and women were more likely to vote to hire a male job applicant than a female job applicant with an identical record. Similarly, both sexes reported that the male job applicant had done adequate teaching, research, and service experience compared to the female job applicant with an identical record.

It won't let me add the link to the quote, so here's the source for the quoted study.

These are just a few examples of discrimination against women within the United States. Given what was observed indicates that we haven't achieved equality yet. We're still short of it. We still have to get rid of our old sexist notions that are ingrained within our cultures and societies. It's going to take a while before it happens, but feminists have accomplished a lot over the past few centuries and will continue to fight sexism wherever it may be.